Too Many Kids Being 'Forgotten About' by Education System
Too many children are being let down by schools who exclude them then don't do enough to help them get back into mainstream education.
That's according to the Centre for Social Justice, which argues for more early intervention to prevent disruptive children being kicked out in the first place.
"Some children find it very difficult to concentrate in school," says Alex Burghart, Director of Policy at the Centre.
"When that support isn't given, problems escalate, and then that leads to them being excluded. That may lead to them going into a pupil referral unit where they are treated as troublemakers and don't get the attention they need.
"You can imagine how a young person, being put into a new environment - where there are other young children who have problems with THEIR behaviour - can get into a bad cycle.
"That leads them to skipping school and you can see how it can go down and down and down."
One woman who knows all too well how that 'bad cycle' works is Lucy*.
Her problems started when her 14-year-old son was excluded from school for four weeks and sent to an off-site learning provision.
She believes it was there that he fell in with the 'wrong crowd', and didn't get the right encouragement to improve his behaviour and get back into school.
"I'd have been the first to say 'it's the parents' fault - bad parenting'," says Lucy.
"Because nothing could have prepared me for this. It was like a car crash. It consumed my whole 24/7. So much so that I gave up work, thinking 'let's get him back into school and back on the right path'.
"But nothing prepared me for how difficult that was going be. It pretty much destroyed me, and destroyed mine and my son's relationship."
Lucy says her son hated being at the offsite learning provision and didn't have any motivation to turn up.
Things gradually spun out of control and - 18 months on - he's now in a young offenders unit with a criminal conviction.
"He was just forgotten about. Because he was mixing with people that he just wouldn't have come across, he just wasn't coming home," says Lucy.
"Then he'd not be coming home for two nights, three nights...he was being found drunk...he was beyond recognition. I just didn't recognise my own son."
Lucy says one of the hardest times was her son's 15th birthday when she went to wake him up with presents and cards to find he hadn't actually bothered to come home.
"It had got so bad that every time he left the house I was thinking 'will this be the last time I ever see my son again?'," she admits.
"Every time there was a knock on the door I thought 'are they going to tell me my son's been fatally hurt? Or are they going to tell me my son's really, really hurt someone else?'
"Once you're into a certain cycle, it's proved impossible to break. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought I'd be where we are now.
"I'm his mum - I won't condone some of the things he's done - but I'll never stop fighting for him. You move on because life goes on, but you can never get those years back.
"I would have thought the biggest argument me and my son would have been having was what outfit he's wearing to the prom. The reality is heartbreaking."
In its 2011 report 'No Excuses: A review of educational exclusions', the Centre for Social Justice highlights the need for more support for some of the most vulnerable children who end up being 'written off by society'.
It calls for schools to intervene effectively before disruptive behaviour manifests itself, rather than simply reacting to it.
"You will always have to have a degree of alternative provision, but you can make sure it is engaging and inspiring and helps children make positive choices so that they get their lives back on track," says Alex.
"It's all really a question of how you go about it. If you treat offsite provision as a dumping ground where your primary mission is to get those children away from mainstream education so that the ordinary school day can carry on then yes, things will go wrong."
*We've changed her name to protect her identity